The Buddha's Teaching

There is a Koan: 'What is the Buddha's Teaching?'

An answer was: 'Shiki soku ze ku, ku soku ze shiki' - 'Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is form'.

This prhase comes from what is commonly called the Heart Sutra or Hannya Shingyo; in our school we call this sutra 'the wisdom heart teaching' (and this is actually what is says, Hannya is wisdom and Shin is heart/mind and gyo is teaching); for even though this sutra is the heart of the heart or the core teaching (which is why it is also right to call it the heart sutra), the pillars of our school are wisdom and compassion... that wisdom and compassion are not really separated... that when we separate them, we may lean too far one way or the other and can lose the chu-do (middle path); This middle path forms the foundation of our school, and must be kept. But as long as we have chu-do, and both wisdom and compassion together, we can reach safely to infinity in all directions.

Shiki is form
Ku is emptiness.
soku means 'is' but also to be just so, or even here/now.

Thus this phrase as an answer is multilayered, so much so that we cannot really pick it apart in words at all like this. But let's play with it a bit more just the same.

If we relate Shiki to Wisdom and Ku to Compassion or Heart, our wisdom heart sutra is again almost repeated in the answer phrase.

But to also choose the soku is what interested me. When I learned that in some phrases in other sutra the 'soku' for 'is' can be translated as 'here/now'... this place, this moment... This too is a core teaching! The phrase 'Be Here Now' became famous from Guru Ram Dass, and he deserves credit for it's popularity and propagation; The Power of Now is also a book by Eckahart Tolle, who makes this a central theme of his tecahing; but the phrase is ancient, and at the core of many schools including ours. Be Here/Now... Be here/now in the middle path with both wisdom and compassion is core teaching of this sutra, and then just let everything else go, let everything go.

'Shiki soku ze ku, ku soku ze shiki' is truely the heart, compassion, and wisdom of the Buddha's teaching.

Gassho
jyozen